


You got a fast car, I want a ticket to anywhere

by gutsandglitter



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:23:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsandglitter/pseuds/gutsandglitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Back before things got complicated – before her pro and con lists, before his job offer, before Rosslyn and the resulting aftermath – CJ and Danny would go on drives together."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You got a fast car, I want a ticket to anywhere

Back before things got complicated – before her pro and con lists, before his job offer, before Rosslyn and the resulting aftermath – CJ and Danny would go on drives together.

It was always late at night after a rough news cycle. They would find themselves leaving the White House at the same time, world-weary and bedraggled, being waved through the gate by the grumpy security guards who had gotten stuck with the night shift that week. They’d exchange tired smiles and a few pleasantries, and the next thing CJ knew she would be in the passenger’s seat of Danny’s beat-up Dodge Durango heading South on I-95.

Sometimes they would talk, but more often than not CJ would fiddle with the radio until she found a classic rock station that wasn’t completely obscured by static and let that fill the silence. 

Most of the time they would just drive, spending hours putting distance between themselves and the city only to return when the ink-black horizon began to lighten. 

Occasionally they would find an all-night diner in upstate Virginia. They’d order pie and coffee and pretend they were different people with different reasons for being there. 

Once, Danny pulled the car into a turnout and they made out in the backseat like teenagers. It was frantic and sweet and sad, and afterwards they had fallen asleep right there wrapped in a tight embrace. The next morning CJ had been late for a meeting with the Secretary of Agriculture, but she couldn’t have cared less. 

It was during those drives that she truly fell in love with him. She loved his writing and his jokes and how he was one of the few people quick-witted enough to be able to banter with her, but more than anything she loved the way she felt around him. She felt safer in the passenger seat of the Durango than she did being flanked by highly-trained members of the Secret Service. On those midnight drives to nowhere she could be a version of herself that didn’t exist anywhere else. She could let her guard down completely; she didn’t have to have all the answers, she didn’t have to be the smartest person in the room, she didn’t have to have anything to prove. 

Driving down the freeway with the windows down and her fingers laced with Danny’s over the gear shift, CJ could just simply be.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car".


End file.
